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Topic: Cooling Milk - Small Volumes (Read 10598 times)

Any suggestions for cooling milk faster? I get 3-4 gallons per milking out of my Jersey cow and you can imagine how long it takes to cool a 4 gallon pot of milk in the refrigerator. I split it up into smaller containers to help cool faster, but if someone has a better approach I would love to hear it!

At a restaurant supply store I noticed some long plastic containers that you fill with water and then freeze. You can use them to stir soups to help cool faster for storing. I thought about trying that, but I don't have a lot of free space in my freezer and wasn't too excited about having one more thing to wash twice a day.

I keep my milk in glass gallon jars and it seems to cool quickly enough that I don't have any problems with it. I have the fridge set at about 35 degrees, too, so that helps.

I got these jars free from a local bowling alley - they are pickle jars. I got the pickle odor out of the lids by coating the insides of them with dish soap and allowing them to sit that way for 3 days, then washed them out. No more pickle odor!

That's a lot of milk, isn't it? My cow freshens at about that level, too, but I sharemilk with the calf, so I don't have to manage it all. Plus, we keep chickens and raise pigs each summer, so I feed them a lot of clabbered milk, too. It helps cut down on grain costs for those animals.

I've heard of people using those glass jars. I'll have to ask around to see where I can get some. It would help to split up the milk in smaller quantities for sure. When I don't have time for cheesemaking or don't have somewhere else for the milk to go, I also give it to the calf and to the chickens.

I have faced the same problem. I milk three every day and get 7.5 gallons total every morning. I have 2 fridges and I keep one designated for the fresh milk and then move them to the other in the am; freshest milk is always on the right. The main thing is to keep the door shut and make sure the air can circulate each jug In gallon jugs they get to 33 pretty fast. I do use a few glass jugs when there is too much milk but the plastic gallon kraft mayo jugs seal better and i dont worry about breaking them. They have very wide lids making it easy to cream them too. and handles! You just have to eat a lot of mayo! The pic I attached has 4 of these; the ones with big blue lids. i keep my fridge set very low also.

I milk goats, not cows, but probably use the same stainless steel milk bucket and inflations. Here is what I do:

I have 2-two gallon buckets of brine solution (Salt Water) that I keep in my freezer. When I get ready to milk the goats I empty the contents of these buckets into a larger rubbermaid bucket with handles (bought at Walmart). I then submerge the stainless steel milk bucket in the brine solution. As I am milking the goats, it cools down in the stainless steel milk bucket. So, by the time I finish milking and take the stainless steel milk bucket inside for processing, the milk is already at 55 - 60 degrees. I then bottle it and immediately place the bottles in the freezer. I sell most of my goat milk frozen and have never had a complaint!

I have a five gallon covered can that I carry milk from the barn into the house with. On the days I'll be longer in the barn, I put the pail of milk in a bucket and fill it with cold, running water. I leave it running until I'm ready to bring the milk inside. Sometimes it's been chilled for 1/2 hour that way. Obviously, you have to do that outside, but it does chill the milk pretty fast and gives you a jump start on getting it chilled in the fridge.

In the house, I put the can in the sink and fill it with cold water and ice if I can't get to it right away.

In large operations, the cooling system often uses a heat exchanger or a system of heat exchangers. Shell and tube systems are the most common. It's possible to build one yourself, but it requires some welding. Or you can use a more basic counterflow condenser to initially get a 30-40 degree drop right away from ~100 to 60-70. Like this one: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/How_to_make_a_Counter_Flow_Chiller . Substitute copper for 316 stainless flexible pipe and ask a welder to make sanitary connections for you, and just pump the milk through while having the hose on. May take some flow regulators to make sure the milk and water are being pumped at the right rate to get the temp drop you want.

For a cheaper readily available solution, you can use a wort chiller with the milk gravity fed or gently pumped so as to not overagitate. Something like this

But why not copper? I think these chillers would be used for 6.5-ish pH milk and that's pretty close to neutral. Is there a reason we would not want to have copper in the fresh milk for a few moments? I think trying to bend 316 stainless would be pretty difficult if you wanted to make your own immersion chiller (like home brewers use), but if made from copper then it's easy.... not to mention much more cost effective.

Thx,Brian

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"There are 10 types of people in the world - Those who understand binary, and those who don't"

Corrosion and cleaning. Depends how you do it. With a counterflow enclosed chiller, it's pumped through, not exposed to air. If you do that, milk stone can form, and you need to remove milk stone with an acid rinse. Acid rinse and copper don't play so well together. Also you couldn't use copper commercially.

If you did a regular immersion chiller in a bucket, you could do that, use copper. But then sanitation is kind of a PITA. With a CIP system and heat exchanger, pretty easy to pump it all through, clean out, and be done with it.

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Taking an extended leave (until 2015) from the forums to build out my farm and dairy. Please e-mail or PM if you need anything.